Fans of Arkansas-Pine Bluff might have been wondering around New Year's time if they'd ever be able to see their favorite team win a game.

If they stayed loyal, those fans now get a chance to see the Golden Lions play in the NCAA tournament.

Arkansas-Pine Bluff is in the NCAAs for the first time in program history and will take on Winthrop in Tuesday night's play-in game in Dayton, Ohio (ESPN, 7:30). The winner will advance to a matchup Friday against Duke, the top-seeded team in the South Regional.

While Winthrop has been in the tournament eight times since 1999, it's a whole new experience for Arkansas-Pine Bluff, which qualified by winning the Southwestern Athletic Conference title, beating Texas Southern 50-38 in the league tournament final.

It's been a long climb to respectability for Arkansas-Pine Bluff, which was 1-26 six years ago, and the trek just this season wasn't all that easy, either.

All of those contests were on the road, and so too were the team's first three conference contests. The Golden Lions didn't play a home game until Jan. 16.

While the school earned an estimated $800,000 from all of the non-conference travel, Arkansas-Pine Bluff has gone 17-4 since then, and second-year Golden Lions coach George Ivory says the schedule served his players well.

"It was a very competitive schedule, and we played against a lot of different styles," Ivory says.

"Some teams had great big men, some had good guards, some others had good wing players. So it prepared us for the conference, and once the conference started, we played well."

While the opening-round game is dreaded by some teams, which don't like the idea of having to play an extra contest just to join the other 63 clubs in the first round, Ivory says he and his team aren't taking that approach.

"This is an opportunity for us," he says. "We usually don't get to play on national television, and this will give us some national exposure.

"The whole thing has been great for our fans, and everybody is very excited. And I think we can use it as a great recruiting tool."

The Golden Eagles are led by guard Terrance Calvin's 10.4 points a game, but four other players average at least eight a game, and Tavaris Washington, another guard, scored 14 points to lead Arkansas-Pine Bluff in the SWAC final.

Yet another backcourt player, 5-10 Allen Smith, was named the tournament's MVP.

While the Golden Lions might not have a solitary go-to player, Ivory says a reason for their success is they have many players who can step up and score nine or 10 points.

Expansion impact: The opening-round contest, or play-in game as it's commonly called, could be at a crossroads.

Started in 2001 as a way to keep 34 at-large teams in the NCAA field after the number of automatic qualifiers went from 30 to 31, the game's future appears murky as conversation grows about expanding the tournament. If the bracket grows by 31 teams to 96, there will be no more need for an opening-round game involving the two lowest-seeded teams.

However, there has also been talk of expanding the bracket to 68. That could mean four opening-round games, one in each regional, with the winners advancing to take on the four top seeds.

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